The lessons imparted by “Foreign Letters,” the debut feature of Israeli-American director Ela Thier, are ones that will be familiar to anyone who has gone through the tweener-girl film canon of titles like “Mean Girls,” and similar television tales. It’s not exactly controversial to argue in favor of loyalty to friends, self-defense against class bullies of any gender and a vaguely liberal disdain for the rudely arrogant rich.

Sometimes a film’s first few shots tell you almost everything you need to know. Consider the case of “Off-White Lies,” the 2011 directorial feature debut of Maya Kenig, playing here Tuesday, June 12. In the film’s first shot we see a close-up of Libby (Elya Inbar), an adolescent girl dragging a suitcase and carefully carrying a potted plant across an air terminal, her face a mix of uncertainty and determination. Kenig cuts to an overhead shot that isolates the girl in the frame; she is surrounded by the unreadable space of the terminal’s featureless floor.